decorous as we might be, and repressed and checked us;
while we on the contrary urge on you to enjoy more fully the splendour
of your youth and vitality. We desire to see you dance and sing and
laugh and bubble over with the delicious inexhaustible flow of vital
energy; we know that it need not interfere with the refinement of
perfect manners and decorum, and we know too that there is the force
which will sober down and do good work, and there is the health-giving
exercise, the geniality, and the joy that will make you stronger and
pleasanter, more patient and more persuasive to good in years to come.
So it is with boys: men are made in our playgrounds as much as in the
class-room; so, too, is it with you. I must give you a quotation from
"Fo'c's'le Yarns," that delightfullest of volumes--

"It's likely God has got a plan
To put a spirit in a man
That's more than you can stow away
In the heart of a child. But he'll see the day
When he'll not have a bit too much for the work
He's got to do. And the little Turk
Is good for nothing but shouting and fighting
And carrying on; and God delighting
To make him strong and bold and free
And thinking the man he's going to be--
More beef than butter, more lean than lard,
Hard if you like, but the world is hard.
You'll see a river how it dances
From rock to rock wherever it chances:
In and out, and here and there
A regular young divil-may-care.
But, caught in the sluice, it's another case,
And it steadies down, and it flushes the race
Very deep and strong, but still
It's not too much to work the mill.
The same with hosses: kick and bite
And winch away--all right, all right,
Wait a bit and give him his ground,
And he'll win his rider a thousand pound."

There is a word in German which has no English equivalent; it expresses
just the missing ideal I am speaking of. It is a terrible mouthful, as
German words often are--Lebensglueckseligkeit--it is the rapture and
blessedness and happiness of living. Carry the idea away with you, and
make it one of your personal ideals, and home ideals, and school ideals,
and life ideals, this Lebensglueckseligkeit.

"'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."

You can carry this idea with you into society, and use it to brighten
its conventional sociabilities,